Various types of cooking appliances have become increasingly popular. Cooks have moved from crock pots, electric frypans and food processors to ever more sophisticated products which not only cook but also prepare food. An example of this is the automatic bread maker which only requires that the basic ingredients be placed into the appliance; everything after that, including mixing, kneading, rising and baking, is automated. U.S. Pat. No. 4,649,810 to Wong and entitled "Automatic Cooking Apparatus" discloses an integrated cooking apparatus for automatically preparing culinary dishes. In one embodiment of that invention, the recipe ingredients are pre-loaded into a compartmentalized carousel, which rotates on command under the control of a microprocessor to bring the appropriate compartment into position for dispensing its ingredients into a cooking vessel. The ingredients are then heated, stirred, covered and uncovered automatically according to a prescribed recipe. For such an automatic cooking apparatus to be able to reproduce a variety of dishes with the delicacy of the accomplished cook, an automatic stirring mechanism which can stir, mix, turn or agitate the ingredients in the manner of the live cook is necessary. U.S. Pat. No. 4,942,807 issued to Wong and entitled "Turning Mechanism" discloses a sophisticated mechanism for turning food items automatically during cooking. The disclosure of both of these patents are incorporated by reference.